Daniel signed the last page before I understood it was my name being sold, and then he stood up, buttoned his coat, and thanked the woman who now owned me for being so reasonable about the terms.

He thanked her. Buttoned the coat, squared the lapels, and thanked the woman across the desk like she'd let him off a parking fine. Three years. I'd given him three years and a key to the apartment and the soft part of myself I never showed anyone, and he traded all of it for a clean exit, and the worst part was how relieved he looked.

"Cami." He didn't meet my eyes. He'd stopped meeting my eyes somewhere around the second page. "It was the only way. You'd have done the same."

I wouldn't have. We both knew it, which was probably why he was already at the door.

I should have been screaming. Some part of me was, behind glass, far away. The rest had gone still, the way it went still at my father's funeral when somebody had to be the one who didn't fall apart. Twelve months. He'd signed me into twelve months to clear what was left of the Ferreira debt, taken a number for himself on the way out, and left me thirty floors above the harbor with a stranger and a pen.

The stranger had not moved the entire time.

That was the first thing I let myself see. Daniel had been all paper and apology and shifting weight, and she had sat through it without once leaning forward. Tall, spare, silver-blonde hair cut close, fair skin, pale grey eyes that had been on me since I walked in and didn't bother to pretend otherwise. Her hands rested on the white desk, long and still and ringless. No jewelry, no perfume, nothing loud, and she was the most dangerous thing I had ever stood in front of, and I had stood in front of a great many dangerous men in the last year of my father's life.

"Mr. Vossen," she said. Her voice was low and even. "The door's behind you."

He went through it. He didn't look back, which I would also think about later. The door closed without a sound, the way expensive doors do.

And then it was the two of us, and the harbor, and the contract.

"Sit," she said. "Or stand. The chair's there if you want it. I find people prefer to stand for the first half of this and sit for the second."

I stayed standing. "And what are you, in the second half? When I sit down."

The faintest movement at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile. The memory of where a smile would go. "Sabine Roux."

I knew the name. Everyone who'd ever owed anyone in this city knew it. Roux money held paper on half the harbor and ruined families without raising its voice. People said Roux the way they said the word for a tide you couldn't argue with, only outlast.

"I know who you are," I said.

"Then you know I don't waste your time, which is the only courtesy I have that's worth anything." She turned the contract a quarter-turn to face me. "Eleven pages. Mr. Vossen read four. You should read all eleven."

So I read.

I read the way I'd read everything since the family's books became mine and the lies in them became mine to find, slow, every line, my finger under the words so my eyes couldn't skate. The catch in a contract is never where the panic wants you to look. It's in the clause that sounds like a kindness.

Twelve months of personal service in the Roux house, against the full residual Ferreira debt. Room and board. Medical care provided. The debt extinguished in full on completion of the term.

And on page nine, the clause that sounded like a kindness: in the event of an early termination by the obligor, the residual reverts in full to the named guarantor.

I went back up the page to the schedule of guarantors. There was one name on it. It was not Daniel's. Daniel had not guaranteed anything; Daniel had made very sure of that. The name on the line was Beatriz Ferreira.

My sister. Twenty-four, who taught piano to other people's children and had never owed anyone anything in her life.

The screaming behind the glass got louder. My face did not change. I'd had a great deal of practice at my face not changing.

"You put my sister on the guarantee," I said.

"Your former partner put your sister on the guarantee." She let that sit, flat and exact, no apology in it and no satisfaction either. "I held the paper he brought me. He chose the structure. I'd have advised against involving her. He didn't ask my advice."

"How generous."

"It's not generosity. It's information. You'll get more from me by knowing what I am than by hoping I'm something else." She tilted her head a fraction. "You read page nine twice. Tell me why."

"Because page nine is where you'd put the thing you didn't want me to see."

"And was it?"

"No." I looked at her over the top of the contract. "Page nine is where he put it. Whatever you're hiding is somewhere else, and I haven't found it, which is the only reason I'm still afraid of you."

That landed. I watched it land, somewhere behind the pale grey, a small adjustment, like a card turned face-up that she'd meant to keep down. Then it was gone and her hands were still again.

"You'll do," she said, very quietly, and it was not for the terms. It was for me. I felt it the way you feel a hand you weren't expecting at the small of your back, before you've decided whether to lean into it or run.

I signed. Not because she made me. Because the alternative was Bea, and there had never been a version of my life where I let it be Bea. The pen was heavier than it had any right to be, and when I set it down my hand was steady. I made sure of that too.

"There," Sabine said. She gathered the pages without looking at them, her eyes still on me. "You'll have your own room. The door is yours to close."

I stood. The chair I never took was still empty between us.

"I've been looking forward to this," she said.

To a debtor. To a woman whose name she had just bought for a year. Looking forward.

I made it all the way to the soundless door before I understood she'd said it like a woman keeping a promise to herself.